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Brown VS. Board of Education 1954
The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, announced its decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas on May 17, 1954. The decision declared that the system of segregated public schools in the United States was unconstitutional. -
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Civil Rights Movement Events
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The Murder of Emmet Till
Emmet Till, a fourteen year old from Chicago, was sent to visit relatives near Money, Mississippi in Tallahatchie County. The young man, in part to show off to his relatives, allegedly "flirted" and used sexual language in speaking to a 21 year-old white woman working in a country store owned by her husband Roy Bryant. A few days later (on Saturday, August 27th), Till disappeared. His body was eventually found, wired to an old factory fan, on the bottom of a river. Till had been severely bea -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
On December 1, 1955, she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. During her ride, she was told to move out of her seat and to the "colored section" in the back. She refused and was arrested. Her arrest triggered a systematic response among the civil rights community in Montgomery --- a boycott of public transportation. Leading the boycott effort was a young Reverend Martin Luther King, pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. The boycott lasted over a year and ended on November 13 -
Central High SchoolLittle Rock, Arkansas
. When nine black high school students arrived to attend Central High, they were met by an angry crowd. Despite his pledges of cooperation, the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, in fact, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to keep the black students, known as the "Little Rock Nine," out of the school. Faced with this defiance of a federal court order, President Dwight Eisenhower responded by sending troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock with orders to protect the nine students. Eisen -
The "Freedom Riders"
The group consisted of black and white, male and female. They boarded two busses in Washington, D.C. and were bound to New Orleans where they would celebrate the 7th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Their route would take them through South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.They was beatn at one of the terminal and fire bomb -
James Meredith and the University of Mississippi
In September of 1962, James Meredith sought to enroll as the first black student in the history of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). His enrollment triggered substantial resistance from the University, the community of Oxford Mississippi, and the Governor of the state, Ross Barnett. -
Birmingham, Alabama"Project C"
"Project C" was the name given to the plan devised by Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to challenge the system of segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The "C" in the project stood for confrontation, the strategy of nonviolent direct action designed to confront segregation through peaceful demonstrations, rallies, boycotts, and appeals to justice -
George Wallace Stands in the "School House Door"Desegregating the University of Alabama
, the governor of Alabama was George Wallace. He had run for and won the office on the slogan of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." In June of 1963, a federal court barred any state government interference with the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, at the University of Alabama. -
John F. Kennedy Submits Civil Rights Legislation
On the same evening, President Kennedy addressed the public in a speech broadcast by all television networks. It was clear break with JFK's prior and lukewarm position on civil rights. The bill that he submitted to Congress was ultimately passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Birmingham Bombing
On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young girls who were in the church for Sunday school and injured another 20 people.